Why are gender roles so important?
They argue that traditional gender roles assist in the division of labor; create a balanced, healthy, stable society; have built-in characteristics; help sculpt relationships and roles in the family and society; establish a home-work interface; and result in higher levels of happiness.
The significance of gender roles in Things Fall Apart is that each gender has its distinct place in Igbo society. As traditional Igbo society begins to change with the arrival of British colonists, the gender roles begin to change as well.
However, male or female gender-specific identities are irrelevant in modern, civilized society. Gender roles are social constructs developed over time and are not based on natural human behavior. This is because gender roles evolved as a way to organize the necessary tasks done in early human society.
Often women and girls are confined to fulfilling roles as mothers, wives and caretakers. Gender norms position girls as caretakers, which leads to gender inequality in how roles are distributed at the household level. This also results in a lack of education due to the restriction of outside opportunities.
Background: Gender role, sex-oriented attitudes, behaviors, cognitions, and emotions play an essential role in interpersonal relationships. Along with other factors, marital relationships and satisfaction can also be affected by a person's gender role.
Gender role ideology falls into three types: traditional, transitional, and egalitarian.
Gender-role development is one of the most important areas of human development. In fact, the sex of a newborn sets the agenda for a whole array of developmental experiences that will influence the person throughout his or her life.
Gender has implications for health across the course of every person's life. Gender can influence a person's experiences of crises and emergency situations, their exposure to diseases and their access to healthcare, water, hygiene and sanitation. Gender inequality disproportionately affects women and girls.
Gender roles are influenced by the media, family, environment, and society. In addition to biological maturation, children develop within a set of gender-specific social and behavioral norms embedded in family structure, natural play patterns, close friendships, and the teeming social jungle of school life.
Children need to be taught gender roles however they need to be updated gender roles which promote equality between the genders instead of inequality like the traditional ones. Gender roles are important to society because they teach children the norms and expectations they need to live in society.
Who is responsible for gender roles?
Theories of gender as a social construct
Most children learn to categorize themselves by gender by the age of three. From birth, in the course of gender socialization, children learn gender stereotypes and roles from their parents and environment.
- Girls should play with dolls and boys should play with trucks.
- Boys should be directed to like blue and green; girls toward red and pink.
- Boys should not wear dresses or other clothes typically associated with "girl's clothes"
Gender roles are the product of the interactions between individuals and their environments, and they give individuals cues about what sort of behavior is be- lieved to be appropriate for what sex. Appropriate gender roles are defined according to a society's beliefs about differences between the sexes.
“Gender role attitudes” refer to views held by individuals regarding the roles men and women should play in society. It is a term most often used with respect to the distinction between paid and unpaid work.
Gender role focus on social construction of identities within the household, it also reveals the expectations from 'maleness and femaleness' in their relative access to resources.
Although Okonkwo spends most of his time expressing his masculinity, he often ignores or violates feminine tenets like peace and valuing one's family. Shunning of all things feminine causes him to commit ever-escalating crimes that lead to his downfall.
The dominant role of Igbo women is to make pure wives for their honourable husbands. In marriage, they are expected to be submissive to their husbands, do housework and domestic chores, farming and bear children. All these behavioural traits were the social, economic and family norm Igbo women found themselves in.
Gender roles in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart are very strict. Women are expected to provide dinner for their husband and children, and tensions arise when this doesn't happen. In addition, only sons can inherit from their fathers. This causes further tension, both for Okonkwo's daughter and for his eldest son.
The study further shows that Achebe used language in Things Fall Apart to glorify masculine gender while portraying the female gender as docile, foolish, weak and irresponsible second-class citizen.
He greatly valued his people because they epitomized masculinity, and thus he mourns his clan and considers it of less value by seeing his clan as feminine. Because his Umuofia people will not fight a holy war against the Christians, Okonkwo considers them weakened to the point of womanliness.
What is responsibility of girl in society?
They go to school, help with housework, work in factories, make friends, care for elder and younger family members and prepare themselves to take on the responsibilities of adulthood. Girls play multiple roles in the household, society and the economy.
a native or inhabitant of Nigeria.
The idea of masculinities refers to the position of men in the gender order. Whitehead and Barrett explain that: Masculinities are those behaviours, languages and practices, existing in specific cultural and organisational locations, which are commonly associated with men, thus culturally defined as not feminine64.